Word: wallenberg
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...almost twelve years Russia and its Baltic neighbor, Sweden, have been in a bitter dispute over the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, a slender, balding Swedish-legation attache who was picked up by Russian secret police in Budapest near the end of World War II. When the NKVD drove him off to Marshal Malinovsky's headquarters on Jan. 17, 1945, Wallenberg said: "I'm going to Malinovsky's . . . whether as a guest or prisoner I do not know yet." Those were the last words ever heard from...
...Raoul Wallenberg was no ordinary diplomat. The polylingual, much-traveled son of a wealthy Swedish banker, he had begun his diplomatic career only some six months earlier after a quiet meeting in Stockholm with U.S. Minister Herschel Johnson and Iver Olson, representative of Franklin Roosevelt's War Refugee Board in Sweden. Olson and Johnson put the mission to Wallenberg simply: Would he go to Budapest as a member of the neutral Swedish-legation staff and, using U.S. funds, try to save Hungary's remaining 300,000-odd Jews (prewar Hungarian Jewish population: 800,000) from Nazi gas chambers...
With Zeal & Energy. Wallenberg went. He arrived in Budapest listed officially as third secretary of the Swedish legation, his luggage bulging with information on Hungarian underground agents and secretly pro-Allied officials of the Hungarian government. Operating with enormous zeal and energy, he persuaded Hungarian officials that if a Jew claimed neutral citizenship he should not be deported until the truth of his claim had been established. This done, he promptly affixed to the homes of some 20,000 such Jews signs that read: "Under the Protection of the Swedish Legation." He rented 32 houses in Budapest in the name...
Inevitably, the purposeful young (32) diplomat came under Gestapo surveillance. Just before the Russians entered Budapest in January 1945, he went underground. When the Russians arrived, he made contact with Marshal Malinovsky, Red Army commander on the Hungarian front, who advised Stockholm, via Moscow: ". . . Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg well taken care of by army authorities...
Without Post-Mortem. Then the curtain descended. Shortly after Wallenberg was picked up by the NKVD, a Russian official in Stockholm declared: "Wallen berg is not really a prisoner. He committed some follies after liberation; therefore he had to be taken care of. He will return soon safe and sound...